Israeli Magistrate Court freezes demolition of Yusufiya cemetary
The Cemetery was protected by its status as an Islamic Waqf
Jerusalem24 – On Thursday, the Israeli Magistrates Court issued a precautionary order preventing the Israeli municipality of Jerusalem and the “Moria Company” from carrying out any demolition and break-in work on the land adjacent to the Yusufiya cemetery on which the memorial to those lost during Six-Day War is erected.
The court fully accepted the appeals of two lawyers, Muhannad Jabara and Hamza Qatina, who claimed that the discussion is about illegal actions carried out by the Israeli municipality in Jerusalem, including the demolition of the stairs and the wall leading to the Yusufiya cemetery, Bab al-Asbat and al-Aqsa Mosque.
It has been categorically proven that the plot of land is an Islamic Waqf, or endowment. And that the cemetery committee of the Islamic Endowments Department is responsible for it, and that the Israeli municipality in Jerusalem operates in the place without any right and without any plan, or any approved license.
Lawyer Muhannad Jabara explained that during the session that took place to discuss the precautionary request against the Israeli municipality in Jerusalem, which lasted for more than 4 hours. That after the witness was questioned by the Israeli municipality, it was categorically proven before the court that the land is a cemetery and an Islamic endowment and that the Israeli municipality does not have a right to own and dispose of this land as the municipality claimed in passing.
Lawyer Muhannad Jabara explained through his pleading before the court that the talk is about an Islamic land, which was designated as an Islamic cemetery since the days of the Jerusalem Municipality in the Jordanian era, and clear documents confirming that this land was confiscated from its owners by the Jerusalem Municipality for the purpose of allocating it as a cemetery as an expansion for a cemetery Youssoufia, as the Jerusalem Municipality handed over this land to the Islamic Endowment Department, which in turn stopped it as an Islamic endowment land for the purpose of establishing a cemetery, but after the 1967 war, Israel transformed the organization in the area so that this land was classified as green land, like hundreds of dunams in East Jerusalem that prevent Building out and also forbidding the dead by burial.
For his part, lawyer Hamzah Qutayna explained that the Israeli court saw that they hold more than reasonable claims regarding ownership in the land and regarding the classification of the land as a cemetery, unlike the occupation municipality in Jerusalem, which did not succeed in presenting any document confirming its ownership of the land, as it only claimed that it is registered in the records of the Department Property tax A thing that, in any case, has no legal value.
The two lawyers, Jabara and Qatina, bemoaned the behavior of the occupation municipality in Jerusalem and explained that even the Muslim cemeteries were not spared from the oppression of the municipality of the occupation, as the main road connecting from Sultan Suleiman Street to the area of the cemeteries and the Al-Aqsa Mosque was recently closed. It operates according to the law, as the municipality does not like to build gardens and parks over Muslim graves and remains, as happened in the “Bab al-Rahma and Ma’man Allah” cemetery, as there are Jewish cemeteries on the Mount of Olives that extend over large areas and they never thought of converting even a part of it to public facilities.
The two attorneys, Jabara and Qatina affirmed that the court’s decision to stop the municipalities’ work is an important achievement at this stage, but the confrontation has not ended yet. It had become clear during the court session that the Israeli municipality in Jerusalem is secretly trying to present a project of confiscation against this land and other neighboring lands without an announcement to the public. The submission of the petition revealed this hidden scheme that the municipality is working for, and that the legal staff will confront all these procedures and violations that target this Islamic cemetery.
